A client of ours recently mentioned that their inside sales team would be thrilled to have a new video to share every week — but, of course, “we don’t have the budget for that.” Actually, if they — and you — have a video budget at all, you probably do have the budget to produce the right videos for inside sales. What kind of videos does inside sales really need? In an article titled “Inside Sales vs. Outside Sales,” Gabe
You often see references to “video content” in articles comparing different types of content for sales enablement and content marketing, in this blog post and elsewhere. But, if you think about it, we don’t make video content. Nobody does, because video isn’t a “content type” like white papers, case studies, and other established genres. With a white paper, you know what to expect just by reading the title. Not so with video, where you hardly ever know quite what to
A summary of findings from up-to-date academic studies, Evidence of Improving Knowledge Retention with Interactive Video, was recently published by the developers of the free open-source interactive video tool H5P, which I’ve written about previously. Here are a few that are especially relevant to complex and enterprise sales. Interactive video has more impact than traditional video The interactive layer (HTML5 user controls added to standard online video files) allows learners to significantly extend their attention span More students accessed online
Software makes a big impact on the bottom line in just about every organization today. Real-life software users influence buying decisions. So, if you sell a technology solution that involves software, at some point in the sales cycle you need a persuasive video software demo. Depicting credible reason(s) to try your software As with any marketing video, the essential purpose is to get the viewer to seek out more information. You may want the customer to download a trial version,
How do you get ready to make a video? Most enterprise technology solution video production starts with someone’s assumption that a video is required, a budget and (preferably) a deadline. Then someone writes a script or a treatment. Here are five practical planning steps (my take on excellent suggestions from TechSmith, makers of Camtasia and Snagit), that will save time and money in the production process. Define one customer benefit Your goal is not to make a video. It’s not to
This is the time of year when content creators mull over the year’s “trends” and opine about what we should be doing during the coming year. I’m not going to do that, but I will share a few “trends” noted by others that could be video trends of interest to technology solution providers. Get more out of the videos you’ve already made This is my favorite, from a Vidyard blog post titled “Three exciting B2B video trends for 2019.” While
If your content marketing strategy includes white papers, blog posts, videos, etc. you might want to rethink it. Video isn’t a content type like the others. When a customer clicks on a link to a white paper or a blog post, they have a pretty good idea of what to expect. But video, not so much. Sure there are different types of videos: webinars, thought leadership, explainers, tutorials, and so forth. But if you manage the video budget along these
A fascinating new research report by Forrester’s Laura Ramos finds that companies waste a ton of money on content that “buyers don’t want and sellers won’t use.” The survey of marketing decision-makers reveals that few of them think they have a complete understanding of exactly what content sales needs, although they recognize that the sales process is a crucial channel for content distribution. She identifies a number of practices that have helped companies create marketing content that satisfies both buyers and sellers.
The first rule for keeping videos for IT decision-makers short, is “Don’t tell them what they already know, just tell them what they want to know.” Maybe that’s two rules, but enforcement is hard either way. It’s particularly hard to say what each person on a buying team starts out knowing or wants to know. Not everyone is out to acquire “product knowledge.” Some good general guidelines on what IT decision-makers want to learn can be gleaned from the wealth
Gartner, the leading supplier of categories to the Information Technology Industry, has come out with a new one: Buyer Enablement Tools. “Today’s buying journey isn’t just hard — it has reached a tipping point where it’s become nearly unnavigable without a significant amount of help,” according to Brent Adamson, principal executive advisor at Gartner. “Much like sales enablement, sales organizations must focus on what we call ‘buyer enablement’.” Gartner research indicates that two-thirds of any B2B buying journey is devoted